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Outlook 2003 / Win 7: Download groups / blocks of emails?

Hi

I'm helping a friend set up a new laptop after hers died. I've just finished setting up her email and did a test send / receive - only to discover that there are 23549 messages (1.09GB) trying to download! Obviously, she's had the "leave a copy on the server" option ticked for the last 2 years (since mid-2009), and now Outlook wants to download everything again. This is not bad per se (since she lost everything on the old laptop), but the server keeps timing out after 5-10 minutes, and when I restart the send / rx it starts from the beginning again. I've changed the time-out length to long, but that made no difference.

There is the option of having her ISP delete all the old mail, but she would prefer to download it and work through it so she can keep some of the important old mail. Is there no way to make Outlook just download the mail in blocks of X number of messages (say, 500 at a time) or using a MB count (like 100MB at a time)? I understand why the send / rx restarts from the beginning after the server times out, but there must be a way around this.

I've done a search on the web, but no one else seems to have wanted to do this before (which seems odd). Help please.

How were you thinking that would work, specifically? She has been using the webmail interface for the last couple of months. Webmail is notoriously slow and clumsey, and her ISP's one certainly ranks up there with some of the worst. I don't understand how one can download the mail via webmail, as webmail is by definition on the web via a browser, not through an email client. I suppose it might be possible to set up an imap-type connection via Outlook, but that would be very slow and might cause as many problems as it causes. Would you mind explaining exactly how you envision your suggestions working in practical terms? Thanks.

Quite simply because via the browser doesn't have the time out restrictions she is experiencing via outlook.

I am not aware of any block download settings via outlook, you can't split the downloads with outlook. You have to download all the backlog in one session. Therefore she needs to avoid using outlook until they are all downloaded via webmail.

If she can download them all via the browser this will then prevent outlook having to download them as well. In other words they can only be downloaded once. If she clears them via webmail outlook will not look for them again.

Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I must be wearing my "thickie" hat today, as I don't understand what you mean by "download them all via the browser". I thought that webmail interfaces are only a means to viewing, not downloading? If you're thinking about viewing them so that they are marked as read, apart from the new ones, all the old ones are already marked as read in the webmail interface. My understanding is that it's not applicable whether the webmail sees mail as read or not, but whether Outlook has downloaded them before or not.

Webmail downloads them as well. Although they may not be physically stored as they would be when using an email client the main thing she needs to do is get them from the server.

By using webmail the server will presume the mail has been downloaded and therefore the next time she fires up outlook it should only look for new mail.

Another option she could use webmail for is to delete any mail she doesn't need to keep. By doing that she will reduce the backlog and then the chances are outlook will not time out because there are less to download.

The bottom line is she needs to dramatically reduce the mail volume before using outlook again.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify - much appreciated. Here is was thinking all this time that webmail was simply a way to log on to the ISP's server and look at my mail! It sounds like my friend has got a real job ahead of her then - glad I don't have to do it! I suppose she might just have to bite the bullet and instruct her ISP to nuke everything for 2009 / 2010 - at least that way she's only got one year's worth of stuff to sort, not 2.5.

Here's a thought - are then any web-based tools that allow for "sifting" through a webmail account to delete emails with certain attributes? I was thinking that she could delete all mail from certain senders or domains (like old newsletters - she's subscribed to quite a few of those), or certain dates / date ranges?

Here's a thought - are then any web-based tools that allow for "sifting" through a webmail account to delete emails with certain attributes? I was thinking that she could delete all mail from certain senders or domains (like old newsletters - she's subscribed to quite a few of those), or certain dates / date ranges?

I don't think there any webmail filters. Her ISP should be able to delete emails from specific senders/domains.

Once she has sorted this mail problem out make sure when she uses outlook again the 'Leave a copy on the server' option is unchecked.